


Like Me (Dreaming of Being Free)

by OnceABlueMoon



Series: Dimes & Dreams [1]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Catra wonders about her origins, Catra-centric (She-Ra), Gen, Identity, Orphans, Podfic Welcome, Questions, heritage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:35:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnceABlueMoon/pseuds/OnceABlueMoon
Summary: Catra isn’t blind, okay. Not blind like Adora, who could never pick out the differences that mattered to others. Scorpia is large. Scorpia is beautiful. Scorpia looks like Catra.Sure, their colouring might be nothing alike, but their features are. They both have tails, they both have hands that differ from the norm, and sometimes, when Scorpia opens her mouth, Catra hears a clicking sound that certainly isn't human.Catra wants to ask her something, but she has no idea what it even would be, or why she thinks Scorpia would even have the answer.
Relationships: Adora & Catra (She-Ra), Catra & Scorpia (She-Ra)
Series: Dimes & Dreams [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1861579
Kudos: 50





	Like Me (Dreaming of Being Free)

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own She-Ra
> 
> I just finished watching the first season and somehow I wrote this! Hope you enjoy it!
> 
> This was written for my friend who got me into She-Ra! Thank you, darling!

Sometimes Catra looks and… wonders. Looks at her tail, at her ears, at her markings, her nails her- everything. She looks different than the other kids in their age bracket.

‘’Why do you mind?’’ Adora asks late at night in bed, when they’re snuggled up together and it’s warm and safe and _no one_ can sneak up on them because they’re watching each other’s backs. There are several rips in their blanket, but it’s the best in the entire room, because Shadow Weaver likes Adora best and Catra is too vicious to let anyone else take it from them.

‘’I don’t know.’’ Catra says, ‘’Why _shouldn’t_ I mind it?’’

Adora smiles, showing it off in all its gap-toothed glory. Something inside Catra softens at the sight of it. ‘’I’m the only one with blonde hair here.’’ She says.

She’s right. Adora is also a singularity, much like Catra is. But unlike Catra, who was born blind, who had to fight to live before gaining her sight, Adora was born with working eyes and yet she’s never had to open her eyes to the world they're living in. Adora is blind, to the people around her. Blind, to what Catra truly needs. Blind, to the adoring gazes always resting upon her, from people who want something _better_ for her than someone like Catra.

Catra has never understood that part of Adora. How could she be so blind while being so strong? How could she be so adored, while being so callous? How could she _love-_ No. Catra stops herself right there.

She nods at Adora, who takes her at face value and tucks her head into Catra’s neck. Her breath is hot against Catra’s skin as she quickly falls asleep. This is the one constant in Catra’s life: Adora’s breath against her skin as the night falls, the quivering reminder of her humanity, her strong, yet clawless hands wrapped around her.

When she was small, Catra cried easily. She was soft and she suffered, until one day she started to… Cut off parts of herself. Cut into herself, until she shut up. Train harder, until her soft hands became tough, until her body became even leaner and lithe, until she could do everything she ever wanted except kill that very last bastion of her childhood inside of her.

This is the truth: there is only one part of Catra that is _soft,_ from her spiky hair to the razor-sharp claws on her toes. This one thing, the one thing she can never rid herself of, no matter how she tries… It’s her heart. And it throbs when she sees Adora, her heart weakening and wailing and wanting to be loved.

It’s a weakness, and people with a single weak bone inside their body don’t survive in the Horde. Catra forges on.

~~

Adora is gone and everything hurts but Catra thinks it must be for the best. No weak thing survives in the Horde and Catra isn’t _weak,_ but she certainly can’t afford to be soft. That last soft thing inside of her isn’t quite dead yet, but seeing Adora with her new ‘friends’… Well, that sure did strangle it nicely.

Catra wonders if Adora could feel it, even from such a distance away. Her heart has always been a complicated thing, the thing she tried to hide the best she could, but never really managed to. Not as long as Adora was near, not as long as Adora kept feeding it. That warm feeling in her chest, the dream of Catra and Adora against the world, side by side, as equals.

That dream is dead now. Or, well, Catra would like to say it was. But it isn’t, because the thing in her chest isn’t dead yet, but it will be. It’s bleeding. It’s hurting. It only needs a single push more and it will… Let go. Catra is sure of it.

This is when she meets Scorpia. Scorpia is huge, and beautiful and very, very annoying. She wears her heart on her sleeve, but somehow nobody ever hits _her_ for it. Catra doesn’t know if that’s because she’s just that big and it’s a little intimidating, or if it’s because not even the Horde can bring itself to kill someone that bright. It’s probably the second, because size is no real indicator of deadliness in a place where everyone and everything would tear you apart to get ahead of you if they could. It’s probably the second, because Adora was the same, and Catra has seen enough of that for a lifetime.

She doesn’t want to like Scorpia. But Scorpia likes _her._ This poses quite the problem.

And… Catra isn’t blind, okay. Not blind like Adora, who could never pick out the differences that mattered to others. Scorpia is large. Scorpia is beautiful. Scorpia _looks like Catra._

Sure, their colouring might be nothing alike, but their features are. They both have tails, they both have hands that differ from the norm, and sometimes, when Scorpia opens her mouth, Catra hears a clicking sound that certainly isn't human.

Catra wants to ask her something, but she has no idea what it even would be, or why she thinks Scorpia would even have the answer. She’s searching in the dark, where’s she been living her whole life, blindly feeling around for a light switch when she’s not even sure she believes light exists.

She shakes her head and goes to bed. She sleeps in the air vents these days. After all, she has no one to watch her back in the bunk anymore.

* * *

Catra’s back is against the wall and she needs to act _now._ She needs to capture Adora to prevent Shadow Weaver from demoting her, but she also needs to impress Hordak so he makes _her_ the new Shadow Weaver. About the only good thing that’s come of her promotion recently is that she’s gotten her own room, which means that she can drag Scorpia there to plot with her.

If only Scorpia wasn’t so distracted by- ‘’Wait, the princess ball?! How did you get your claws on an invitation?’’

‘’They send it to me, I’m a princess!’’

‘’You are a _princess?!’’_

Someone in this godforsaken hovel is a _princess_ and even worse, it’s _Scorpia?_ Nice, sweet-but-not-stupid, _intelligent_ Scorpia? Ugh, this explains Scorpia’s huge irritation factor on Catra’s radar. Besides, you know, the personal spaces issues thing. And the _friendship thing._ Ew. Catra’s so done with that after Adora, even if Scorpia is perhaps the closest thing to it that she would have if she _did_ do friendships.

Which she doesn’t. Just so you know.

‘’Oh, yeah, you know! The Horde crash-landed in my family’s kingdom. We let them stay. My family gave Hordak a rune stone: the black garnet.’’

Catra’s mind is whirling. Scorpia’s a princess. Scorpia knows _history._ Scorpia, most mind-blowingly, is _not an orphan._ Catra thought everyone in the Horde was an orphan. It was kind of their thing. Loyalty to the cause because of the brainwashing _and_ because you’ve got nowhere else to go even if you wanted out. Orphans are very convenient for the Horde all around. Did Catra just grow up in the orphan division, or is Scorpia some kind of one-hit wonder, being allowed to stay with her family?

…Stay? Is that… Does Catra… Did she have a family too, once? Is that the question she’s been wanting to ask? All her life there’s been this huge empty hole inside of her, this question that was always there, screaming and crying and begging for answers. Catra _wanted to know._ Because that question, so very important, flows inside her veins like her very blood.

Where do I come from? Is there anyone else like me?

Scorpia seems to know the answer to both of those questions. But Catra can’t bring herself to ask. It would make her soft, she knows. It would make her soft and weak and asking would mean that she would allow Scorpia to look right into her soul, all the way to her wounded, bleeding heart.

Catra’s heart is waiting for the death blow, for that final death of the softness inside of her, but she… She can’t let it die just yet. Neither can she let is spread and grow inside.

She doesn’t ask. Doesn’t dare to.

That night, she climbs into the air vents again. She might have her own room now, but it’s too big and there is no sound of breathing around her, only the cold of the metal and the whirring of the tech in the walls, creeping her out and keeping her awake. Too much space, inside that room. The air vents are better. Still cold and surrounded by the whirring of the tech, but at least here Catra feels somewhat safe, enclosed on all sides. She closes her eyes and dreams.

Inside the safety of her own mind, she dreams of a world full of brightness, where Scorpia is a ruling princess. She rules a nameless kingdom full of people like them, with tails and ears and strange clicking and purring voices. Catra grows up there, hale and healthy, and most importantly: happy. There is no Horde. There is no pain. There is only a beautiful dream of a place where she belongs. Where she doesn’t have to fight for a place to exist.

The next morning, Catra wakes up with her wounded heart healed a little. She hardens the shell around it and pays it no mind.

She doesn’t have time for this: it’s the dawn of another day.

Catra doesn’t have answers. She doesn’t have safety. What she does have is ambition and the power to protect herself the best she can.

Here’s to surviving another day. Maybe tomorrow she’ll take the castle.


End file.
